My Mistake

I had the feeling I mispoke in class today when I said that it is illegal to be gay in Russia. Technically, that’s not true. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993. (Notably it was first decriminalized the year of the Russian Revolution, 1917, and recriminalized with the consolidation of Stalinist power in 1933.) See below:

Homosexuality in Russia – unlike more than 40 countries in the Commonwealth and 70 worldwide – is not illegal. To date, over six months since the law came into force, fewer than a dozen people have been fined for “gay propaganda”. Not a single person has been jailed. Russian police do not have powers to detain people they suspect of simply being gay or lesbian, as a New York Times leader erroneously stated last year. If this were so, then how do we explain the fact that gay clubs are able to advertise and operate in Moscow and other big cities?